The Basilica of Santa Croce is one of the largest Franciscan churches and one of the greatest achievements of Gothic in Italy, and has the rank of minor basilica. It is the burial place of some of the most illustrious Italian characters, such as Michelangelo Buonarroti, Galileo Galilei, Niccolò Machiavelli, Vittorio Alfieri, Ugo Foscolo, Gioacchino Rossini, and is therefore known as the Temple of the Gloria; the definition dates back to the Feat of the Sepulchers by Foscolo, in a passage in which the author defines Florence.
Santa Croce is a prestigious symbol of Florence, the meeting place of the greatest artists, theologians, religious, writers, humanists and politicians, who determined, in good and bad fortune, the identity of the late medieval and renaissance city.
The basilica continued to be enriched and modified in the seven centuries since its foundation, acquiring ever new symbolic connotations: from a Franciscan church to a religious "town hall" for large families and corporations, from a laboratory and artistic workshop to a theological center, from "pantheon" "of Italian glories as a reference place in the political history of pre and post-unification Italy. In fact, some transformations were the result of precise historical and political vicissitudes, such as the transformations made by Vasari in the mid-sixteenth century or the efforts lavished in the nineteenth century to transform Santa Croce into the great mausoleum of Italian history.